Sarabande for lions
by delusaedisillusa
Summary: In which the husband changed, but still there isn't a happy ending


She would open her eyes and wake up in her room, with the childish furniture she didn't like anymore. She wanted to renovate it, but Mother didn't want to spend money for a daughter who would hopefully soon live on her own.

She opened her eyes, but Tywin Lannister was still kissing her. Cersei Lannister wasn't dreaming. The powerful, rich and still good looking head of the Lannister family was kissing her, a mere girl.

It started like a fairytale, Tywin Lannister was visiting her town. Despite being distantly related, she didn't think he would notice her or even speak with her. She was beautiful, she was attractive, but she was only nineteen years old; he was forty two - just five years younger than her own parents. She didn't even know what she was supposed to talk with him about.

At first she believed she was fantasizing. Together with Jeyne and Melara, she was serving drinks at the country club, a good way to improve her finances and she didn't dislike standing for hours while serving cocktails to the old, sickly rich members. She hated that she had to smile, be polite to people she didn't like, but the pay was too good to pass up. Why would Tywin Lannister be looking at one of the servings girl? Even Melara and Jeyne noticed him, and admired her capacity to attract men.

Tywin Lannister wasn't just looking at her, he was staring. Cersei wasn't shy at all, but she couldn't help she blushed.

He was still staring.

Fast, everything happened so very fast. Tywin chose her. They married after a brief and fulminant courtship. She never once asked why he had fallen so hard for her; she had that effect on men. Sometimes he looked at her like he couldn't believe what he saw, like she couldn't be true.

How couldn't she fall for a man like him? She could finally escape her family! Her parents - mediocre, uncommunicative people who hadn't gotten over their son's death, and blamed her for not being him. They had always favored their dead son over their daughter, so they remaining strangers to Cersei as she was to them. No opposition was posed to her marriage. She wasn't sure if she was more relieved or hurt about their indifference.

"Joanna," he had moaned with his seed still warm inside her. On her wedding night, she got the answer to a question she hadn't even asked. Now she knew why his sister had looked at her with pity. She didn't cry, she was far more ashamed than hurt.

Joanna Lannister was dead and Cersei was alive, Tywin would love her more than he had loved her. Cersei Lannister, married Lannister, was just nineteen years old, and this first disappointment in her life didn't break her confidence. She couldn't know that Joanna's shadow would never leave Tywin, that her marriage had never had a chance.

Tywin Lannister had been her first lover. While she had her share of boyfriends, she never allowed any of them to be her "first." No one had been worthy enough. Tywin was a sophisticated, practiced lover. Soon she enjoyed to be "loved" by him. If she tried hard enough, he would soon forget his wife. She'd seen the film - Joanna wouldn't be her Rebecca de Winter, no thanks. Casterly Rock wouldn't be Manderley, because Cersei would rule like she was born to rule.

Tywin had two sons, Jaime, whom two years younger than herself, and Tyrion a nine year old boy. He talked about Jaime and his achievements, he didn't smile, but he was clearly proud of him.

Tyrion, the dwarf - Tywin only spoke a few sentences about him; his younger son was a nuisance to him. Well, it wasn't like she planned to play the mother for them. One day she would have her own children. She would love them, they would never feel inadequate, they would never feel unwanted. Well, she wouldn't birth any dwarves. She would give Tywin children, and he would be proud to be their father. Jaime Lannister's days as the favourite son were counted.

Jaime's father had remarried, a girl barely older than him. Tyrion had asked him if he had to call her mother. He travelled to Australia to marry a blonde Lannister! A Lannister… again! This was beyond weird. The suddenness of it all had shocked his family, they didn't have the time to travel to him. This wasn't like his father at all. The girl must be the ultimate seductress. He was curious.

She was beautiful. It was strange because she looked just like him, but her personality was different. He'd wanted her right from the start. Never he had desired anything this much, but she was his stepmother. He would have to keep his distance.

Jaime was the perfect Lannister. Her children wouldn't stand a chance against him. He was the apple of his father's eyes. She despised him. She despised Tyrion, and she loathed Tywin's family and friends. The unconcealed smiles and mockery, the frowning Kevan, the jokes of Genna, Aerys' knowing smile. She hated how their children treated her, like she had aged twenty years in the few weeks after her marriage.

She was isolated. It was painful to watch. Too young for his father's friends and associate. Too married, with an old guy, for his friends. Was she awkward? Didn't she have any friends? Every little tease seemed like an affront. She was as humorless as his father. Why was he this attracted to her? Did she wake up his knightly feelings?

Cersei wished all the people would disappear. No, truth be told, she wished they would die in painful fashion. Lysa Tully, Jaime's annoying girlfriend, had the courage to call her "future mother in law." She wished to hang her from her red hair, leaving her corpse to the crows… It was Jaime who, to her immense surprise, talked to her and helped her to interact to others. Like a friend or the brother she'd never know.

He became her friend. She had never had a friend like him. It was weird. He seemed to understand her, to accept her. She could be herself. Maybe she wasn't that wrong. Jaime

Lannister liked her. This thought made her cry, and she despised whining girls. Tywin told her she had to be lady Lannister, she had to grow up. Her clothes, her accent, her temper. Nothing was right or good enough.

Jaime said she should be herself. No one had ever told her this. Her parents wanted her to be like her brother, Tywin wanted her to be like Joanna.

She was his stepmother and his friend. His father wanted her to behave like an old lady, but he would rescue the girl. She was two years older, but he never felt more like a man than beside her.

In her dream, she was sitting on a throne, and she wore a heavy crimson robe. She almost couldn't lift her head, the tiara on her head was massive, gold with rubies. Gold were her rings, gold her necklace… but they felt like handcuffs. Tywin's friends and family were there. They didn't pretend to be nice, like the always did, they spoke loud how the little whore managed to marry the lion of Lannister. They were mocking her, laughing at her. She hoped that Tywin would explain that she was a good girl, but he looked at her with disgust. "I married a sheep disguised as a lion."

Strange, but in his dream they both were fifteen. She wasn't nice, even in his dream, but she was as familiar as his body. Her kisses were wild, like her tangled hair, like her blazing eyes. Wild while wrinkling under him, while he was in her. Afterwards, she was almost tender in his arms. She resented him, she resented fate for not being him. In his dream she was as madly in love with him that he was with her. "Love?" He asked the darkness in his room, the pleasure still lingering in his body, slowly turning to despair.

She couldn't breath. Her dress was gone. Now they all were laughing at her. Tywin, Tyrion, Genna, Kevan… she would die. Then he came to her, his normally cutting smile was tender. He gave her that favourite jeans and the green camisole she bought with Melara, some months ago, when she had been just a girl. No one was laughing, no one said a thing while he kissed her. Magically, she could breath again.

Lysa Tully would be an anchor for his sanity. Why didn't he already have sex with her? He was seventeen, no wonder he desired the only woman who was near him. After sleeping with Lysa, he would see Cersei as his young and beautiful stepmother. Nothing else, nothing more.

Tywin was ice, Jaime was fire. After months of cold, Cersei realized that she needed to feel warm, to feel like Cersei, once again. She wanted him. Not as a son, a friend or a brother. She wanted his smiles, his jokes, his laugh. She wanted to lick his neck, to nibble at his ears, to bite his knuckles. She wanted to blow him again and again, she would use her teeth, and nails, and he would cry out while she would milk him in her mouth. She would delete any trace other girls had left on him. He wouldn't touch his cock without thinking of her.

Was she playing with him? What did she want from him? To seduce him? To mock him? Lysa couldn't match the rising sun of Cersei's beauty. He needed to fulfill his desires, but how if he couldn't have the only one he wanted?

Tywin fucked her, precise, routinely, fucked her until she cummed. With Jaime, she would set the pace, he would be clumsy, maybe kind of shy. She would devour him.

Tywin's embrace let her cold inside, thinking about Jaime melted the ice away.

It happened one day, she had visited Tywin at the Red Keep, but Tywin was away for business, like so often. She didn't want to stay at the red keep, surrounded by people who judged every thing she said or did. She wanted to go out, she was wearing some of her old clothes, not the luxurious dresses Tywin had lavished her with. It was an old brown hoodie shirt, a few size larger, her hair and half of her face was hidden. She had been frustrated, alone once again, would she feel less alone if she had her owns children? Would she still lust after Jaime? It was dark, it was a rainy day, her curls unkempt, she wanted to weep. Later they would say it was fate, how they met, how he recognized her despite her clothes, how they decided to wait for the storm to go away in that cheap hotel in Eel Alley. They could have called for a taxi, they could have wait by a coffeehouse. They didn't. She looked at him and every insecurity fled away. He looked at her and every sanity fled away. Neither of them felt any guilt, they were meant to be together. To live in the same world and not love each other would have been a crime. Their betrayal was something they did for love.

She was pregnant. Tywin wasn't as pleased as she thought he would be. Fairly soon they could see that it was a boy. "I already have a son." Cersei didn't argue that he had two. Would he have been more enthusiastic if she told him that it was Jaime's? Well, she couldn't tell anyway.

Jaime was upset. "I already have a brother," he said.

"And a son?" She knew very well she had been his first, his only, but his reaction distressed her.

"It's not like he will ever call me dad."

'It's not like it bothers you,' she wanted to yell at him. She had wanted to meet him to tell him the news, not to sleep with him, but he argued with her they were already in a hotel and it would be a wasted occasion. Like always, he could change her no to yes. He was the only that could do this, he was the only that loved her.

She gave birth to Joffrey, her blond angel, her precious son. Tywin accepted the baby. Jaime was jealous. Tyrion was happy about the new family addition. Cersei loved him fiercely. Tywin loved Jaime because he was Joanna's son. He hated Tyrion because he was the cause of Joanna's death. He fucked Cersei, because she resembled Joanna. He liked Joffrey, because he was a Lannister. Her children would be loved by the Lannisters as Tywin's children. There wouldn't be any love for Cersei. No love if Jaime stopped loving her.

Years passed by.

She gave birth to two other blond curled creature, again she couldn't have said who the father was, but she loved to believe they belonged to Jaime, even if Jaime was indifferent at best. Jaime and the children were her everything. Tywin would never love her. He seemed to realize that she wasn't Joanna and would never be like her. He slept with her, but now she knew what it feels like to be loved. Still she had Jaime, her other half, it shouldn't have hurt her, but it did. She had to fight; against Tywin, who thought her to be a too indulgent mother, against her fear of losing Jaime. She was so afraid of losing him, even when he was inside her, the fear was consuming her. She had gained weight, Tywin hadn't been thrilled with this, him and Jaime were as slender and fit as ever. She couldn't stop to eat, there was a hole inside that needed to be filled, when Jaime wasn't near her. Wine, she discovered, was another source of warmth, the humiliation and fear would go away, for a time.

Meanwhile, Jaime's father wanted him married. He was already thirty four, at his age, his mother had already be a mother and dead. He didn't have a little wife, instead he had his stepmother, who was jealous and demanding despite being the married one. He could have reassured her, she was the only one, but why spare her feelings when he had to suffer imagining her with his father?

She didn't have that much time for him anymore, the kids took too much of her.

Father would be too cold to them, she wanted them to be loved. Had she had her way with the kids, they would be spoiled rotten, but Father and aunt Genna could avert this. She drank too much, but she wasn't often drunk, and when she was drunk she was more loving and tender. She would do everything he wanted while telling him how much she loved him.

His opinion about her drinking changed after her incident that had cost Joffrey's life.

Tywin Lannister made sure nobody knew that she hadn't been sober while driving and killing his son. The Lannister name wouldn't be tarnished by his malinvestment, but he would make sure that Cersei would be punished. A Lannister paid his debts.

She hugged him crying. "My baby boy, Jaime, my baby boy."

'Our son,' he had wanted to say, but he wasn't sure, and even then, he hadn't liked Joffrey, not as a brother or a son. Hadn't he'd been born, he was sure she would have run away with him. She was sobbing against his chest. Desperate, murmuring things he didn't understand, but he felt the raw desperation. She had drove the car. She had killed Joffrey. Jaime couldn't focus his mind on Joffrey, not with Cersei near him.

It had been so long! They had been apart for almost a month. She kissed him, timidly wanting comfort. She wasn't wearing any make up, her nose was running, she had rubbed her eyes, they were now like red scars. He shouldn't want to fuck her, but by the Gods he couldn't think about anything else. She had protested a bit, looking more confused than anything, but she kissed him back whispering him to love her, to make her whole, to let her pain disappear. When they were finished, she got away from him, looking a little hurt.

"Jaime, please don't be this reckless, this could be our end."

Suddenly he was fed up with this whole situation, she wasn't happy with his father. She loved him. Why couldn't she stand for their love? Did she think it would be any easier for him to betray his father… his family? "Cersei please, run away with me. I love you, you love me. Why live in misery for the rest of our lives?"

"Jaime I'm your stepmother! Do you think they would let us be together? Do you think your father would give me a divorce? That he would allow us to take the children?"

"Then just me and you! We can see the children when they are older..."

"Of course. Myrcella, Tommen, I'm so sorry I didn't stay with you, but I had to run away with your half brother or maybe father. What are you thinking?! This is a bad joke!"

"What do you suggest we should do? Continue living like this? Fearing to be discovered? This is the bad joke! Divorce him. Marry me. If you want more children, we will have more. For a change you could be even sure who the father is."

The slap was meant to hurt, and it stung.

"Please, Jaime, go. Let me mourn my child. Please."

Hiding, lying for the rest of their life, not anymore. She made her choice - fine with him. She preferred her proper life to their love. She preferred to cheat and deceive. To fuck him by day and his father by night. Cersei Lannister, the queen of high society, the queen of whores. He had to go away, or he would do something he would later regret.

He took his aunt's advice, and to the wonder and joy of his family, he announced his betrothal to Margaery Tyrell. Cersei tried to speak to him, he never opened his door for her, didn't answer her calls, and destroyed her letters without opening them. He married Margaery Tyrell, eighteen years his junior. Young, pretty, not married to his father. Cersei had kissed him, the very image of a proper mother, at his wedding, looking nervous, knotting her hands. Looking at him like she couldn't believe it was true.

Weeks later he discovered that that day she had drunk so much she had needed her stomach pumped. He spent a month on his honeymoon while Cersei had life threatening pancreatitis, alcohol poisoning, eating disorder. He didn't know. His father took her at the Red Keep, he didn't trust her at Casterly Rock alone.

Almost six months later he saw her again. She didn't look like herself anymore.

Gone was her fire, her temper... Gone was the girl he had loved. Lady Lannister was a great host, flawless from head to toe, the pounds she had gained lost, her smile never wavering. Her behavior was perfect. She talked less and mostly about her husband and his political agenda. She was polite to everyone, even to Tyrion.

"I've never thought she was good for Tywin. Too young, too passionate and not Joanna. Because she may look like your mother, but she isn't. I've always thought she was just an ambitious little slut, but I give her the credit, she tries."

"She stopped drinking. Father sent her to rehab, she couldn't see the children and if she doesn't behave, she will never see them again. If something happens to father Myrcella and Tommen will be raised by uncle Kevan and she will get not a penny. Our dear mother is so very eager to please." Tyrion's tone was ironic, but he looked at Cersei with pity.

"She doesn't even dare to speak that much. She studies the book Father told her to. Bought the dress he wants her to wear. She had gained twenty pounds and she lost twenty eight. She was a mess, but with the right medication, dad has the perfect lady Lannister. I'm not sure how long she will last, but she seems pretty dead to me already."

Jaime couldn't look her in the eyes. "Please don't leave me. You are the only that loves Cersei. My parents wanted a male replacement for my dead brother. Your father wants your mother. Jaime, you are the only one that really wants me. You are my shining knight Jaime. I love you. I love you. I love you. When you are inside me, I feel whole"

He looked at the woman in crimson. The woman he still loved. Her dead eyes would haunt him till his death.

Cersei Lannister tried to be the woman her husband had wanted her to be. Without Jaime, she lost a huge part of her happiness. Without any help and with the clear disdainfulness of her husband, she never got over Joffrey's death. She tried to live with the memory of being loved, she tried to live for Myrcella and Tommen, but despite her hard work, Tywin Lannister separated his wife from their children. Myrcella would study at Dorne, Tommen was to be raised at Casterly Rock.

She died two years after Joffrey, a few days after the announcement of Margaery's first pregnancy, she swam in the ocean and never returned. Her body was found a week later.

Tywin Lannister lived like Cersei never happened. He didn't marry again. Jaime and his wife, had two sons, to Tywin's delight. After his stepmother death, Jaime cared deeply for his half siblings, for whom he was almost a stranger, he returned at Casterly Rock to live with Tommen and was often in Dorne visiting Myrcella. Like the other Lannisters, he didn't speak about his late step mother, but in his dream he would open her letters, he would go to her, he would rescue her like a knight would his princess. He would take her and the children far away and they would live together happily after. He saw her as the nineteen girl she had been, trying so hard to be fierce, almost crying while he proclaimed to her his love.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

She whispered.


End file.
